All three major platforms have good cards this weekend, DAZN, ESPN and Showtime. There are a few fights with bettable lines that we are passing on because we aren’t familiar enough with the fighters. Florian Marku-Rylan Charlton, Darren Tetley-Samuel Antwi, and Dean Dodge-DP Carr are all 60-40 or closer fights. We’re excited to watch them but we’d nearly be betting blind and there’s no reason to do that. We hit some profitable bets last weekend and our current portfolio looks like this:
Boxing Betting Annualized Rate of Return (since 9/17/20): 124.18%
Mutual Funds Annualized Rate of Return (since 9/17/20): 51.73%
Boxing Betting Return On Investment (ROI): 27.49%
We’ll first take a look at Saturday’s main event on DAZN, Josh Kelly vs David Avanesyan. We’ve gone back and forth on this fight. Avanesyan scored a couple nice victories over Kerman Lejarraga to position himself for this fight. He’ll try to cut off the ring and do damage. He doesn’t have massive one punch power, but he’s got enough to put you away. Kelly is a bit of an enigma. He’s a stylist but sometimes focuses so much on making his opponent miss that he doesn’t do much offensively. At times he seems a little too willing to languish on the ropes and slip without effectively countering. While it’s possible these styles may mesh well, we think it’s more likely that Kelly turn this into a low volume cat and mouse fight with many rounds that could be scored for either man. Normally we’d say that would favor Kelly on his home turf, but we also think he’ll spend enough time with his back to the ropes that Avanesyan will be able to win his fair share of rounds. Kelly is probably the favorite here by a shade, but the odds are just a bit wider than we think they should be. We’re going with a two unit bet on Avanesyan.
$28 on David Avanesyan at +120
We’re also betting the heavyweight fight on Saturday’s Showtime card, Dominic Breazeale vs Otto Wallin. Anything can happen when you put two big guys in the ring who can crack a little. But Breazeale has a lot running against him in this one. He’s a little long in the tooth at 36, which isn’t terribly old for a heavyweight. But he’s also been out of the ring for a year and a half and we’re not sure what kind of condition he’ll be in here. He’s only fought one southpaw since 2013, Amir Mansour, and he had some problems with him before winning by stoppage. There’s no shame in losing to Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder, but we think Wallin would defeat everyone that Breazeale has beaten. While Breazeale will enjoy a slight reach advantage, Wallin has the better feet and is comfortable going forward or fighting off the back foot. He’s got more dimensions and we think he has the better gas tank if the fight goes long. Breazeale could catch him with something but we’re going with Wallin here and feel pretty comfortable with it.
$70 on Otto Wallin at -269